Born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, February 1818, in
Talbot
County, Maryland. Son of African-American Harriet Bailey and a
white
father. Married first wife Anna Murray on September 15, 1838 in
New
York City; five children were Rosetta (b. June 24, 1839), Lewis Henry
(b.
October 9, 1840), Frederick, Jr. (b. March 3, 1842), Charles Remond (b.
October 21, 1844), and Anna Marie "Annie" (b. March 22,
1849).
Married second wife Helen Pitts. Died in Washington, D.C.,
February
20, 1895. Buried at Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, New York.

Frederick Douglass was born into slavery on the Eastern Shore of
Maryland
in 1818. As a young man he escaped from slavery and settled in
Rochester,
New York, where he published the North Star and Frederick Douglass'
Paper, worked to assist other runaway slaves to find freedom
and became known for his passionate and eloquent speaking on the
brutality
of slavery. Through his newspaper he reported on the anti-slavery
movement to Northerners. He worked with such abolitionists and
social
reformers as William Lloyd Garrison, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, John
Brown,
and Gerrit Smith.

With the Civil War looming after John Brown's raid on Harper's
Ferry,
Virginia, Douglass was forced to leave the country in order to avoid
arrest.
After a while he returned to become a staunch advocate of the Union
cause.
He helped recruit African-American troops for the Union Army, and two
of
his own sons served in the all-black 54th Massachusetts Regiment.
He developed a personal relationship with President Lincoln that helped
to make emancipation a cause of the Civil War.

In 1872, Douglass moved to Washington, D.C., where he served as
publisher
of the New National Era, a newspaper advocating
African-American
improvement. Douglass also served briefly as President of the
Freedmen's
National Bank, and subsequently in various national service positions
such
as U.S. Marshal for the District of Columbia, and diplomatic positions
in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Douglass' papers and other materials are held at the Frederick
Douglass
National Historical Site.

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